Google Images

June 19, 2013

Many people are under the false impression that any images that they find in Google images are in the public domainThe public domain is not a place. A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner. Most images on the web and indexed by Google are protected by copyright

In the screen shot below,you will note the statement by Google that “Images may be subject to Copyright”

The gear wheel in the upper right gives you access to the advance search feature where you filter the results for use termsFiltering this query for images that you are free to share or use returns no images!

Good info Joe, and great screen captures showing what many people feel are problems with search engines now, the way they make infringing easier, and that copyright notice is tiny and dark. I suppose their new Pinteresty model keeps traffic there on the search site, fattening up their “traffic” numbers, but it’s at our expense. When they started doing it this way I began to notice infringements of my work were credited to Google, (when credited at all), showing the person never went to my site. Thanks Google (note sarcasm).

I do enough searches that I have been able so far to keep the total number of infringements to a fairly low level. I have the best luck using Google reverse image search and Google searches using keywords that tend to bring up mostly my works.

In the example above, I didn’t find any of mine where they should not be

Google really should make that text big, bold, and it should say something more like, “these images are almost certainly subject to copyright.” I still think Google is effectively misleading people by not making it clear that they are “sharing” content taken out of context.

Wonder how Amazon would feel if I created a search engine that played their song samples on my site without benefit of seeing the buy it now button?